Brands have been creating company pages on Google+ since November 2011, and consumer engagement with brand content seems to be picking up.In May, Simply Measured released its report tracking brand page adoption and engagement by looking at the pages for Interbrand’s Top 100 companies—64 of which have verified pages on Google+. Additionally, more consumers are adding these companies to their Circles. As of May 7, 2012, at least 5,000 people had added 35% of these Top 100 brands to their Circles, up from 21% as of February 7. Additionally, 22% of brands had been “Circled” by more than 100,000 people, an increase from 13% in February. Video posts continue to be the most popular type of content on Google+ brand pages, according to Simply Measured. On video posts from the Top 100 brands, there were 115,000 +1s, comments and shares in Q2 2012, up from 66,000 in Q1.Simply Measured also tracks which industries are performing well on Google+ and as of May 2012, nearly 2.7 million people had put an automotive brand in their Circles, pushing automotive ahead of electronics as the most popular industry. In February, electronics and beverages were the top two industries based on the same metric. Luxury brands and internet services have also become more popular for consumers on Google+ over the past several months.While Simply Measured showed that users are connecting with brands more often on Google+ than they have in the past, other research firms aren’t as bullish on engagement with the site. As of February 2012, Arbitron and Edison Research found that only 8% of US consumers had a profile on Google+. And RJMetrics, which studied Google+ engagement from a consumer perspective, in May released findings that the average public post has less than one +1, reply or reshare, and that 30% of users who made one public post never made a second one. Google+ defenders were quick to note that the company was only able to track public content, limiting the amount of data they could analyze—and on Google+, where privacy features were a leading draw since the initial rollout, this could have a substantial effect on results.Overall, consumers aren’t participating on Google+ as much as they do on other social networks, but at the same time, engagement with certain brands and industries is showing promise. As Google works to integrate more of Google+ into search results, marketers will continue to watch this site to see how consumers react.